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Intel announced its second-quarter earnings today, with numbers that add up to what chief Paul Otellini called "the best quarter in the company's 42-year history."

The mega-chipmaker's revenue for the quarter was $10.8bn and 51 cents per share. According to the Wall Street Journal, the consensus of top moneymen was that Chipzilla was going to weigh in at $10.25bn and 43 cents per share.

Net income was $2.9bn, which was up $445m from the first quarter of this year, and up a hefty $3.3bn from the execrable second quarter of last year.

"The PC and server segments are healthy," said Otellini, "and the demand for leading-edge technology will continue to increase for the foreseeable future."

When Otellini said "healthy", he had the numbers to back up that statement: revenue from the PC Client Group was up two per cent since last quarter and revenue from the Data Center Group up 13 per cent in the same period.

The long-awaited enterprise recovery, it seems, may actually be gathering steam. Finally.

In addition, Intel's Q2 2010 saw record mobile-processor revenue and record server-processor revenue.

The company also sees sunny days ahead, with projections of revenue in Q3 2010 to be $11.6bn (plus or minus $400m) and gross margins to be 67 per cent (plus or minus "a couple percentage points"). The WSJ had said that guesstimating moneymen had hoped for revenue projections of $10.92bn.

If momentum continues from "the best quarter in the company's 42-year history," those Q3 estimates may see more pluses than minuses for Chipzilla — and perhaps for an IT economy riding on its massive tail. ®